Jackie Robinson's Legacy

5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Man Who Changed Baseball Forever

Baseball has always been a game of numbers, and on April 15, 2014, no number was more important than 42. That’s the jersey number of Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, and it was worn by all Major League Baseball players and managers yesterday as they honored the legacy of the first black player to break major-league baseball’s color line.

Born in Cairo, Ga. and raised in Pasadena, Calif., Robinson began his career in the Negro leagues before leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to six pennants and one World Championship over a memorable 10-year span.

His competitive nature made him one of the finest Major League Baseball players of his day and led Dodgers manager Leo Durocher to quip, “This guy didn't just come to play. He come to beat ya. He come to stuff the goddamn bat right up your ass."

Here are five things men should know about Jackie Robinson.

He Went Hitless In His Debut

So much has been made of Robinson’s Major League debut on April 15, 1947 that it’s easy to forget he failed to get a hit.Batting second and playing first base, Robinson went 0-for-3 at the plate. He did, however, make his mark on the game in the seventh inning when he reached first base on an error and later scored the game-winning run on a double by center fielder Pete Reiser. Robinson downplayed his somewhat pedestrian performance afterwards, glibly insisting he had gone hitless not because of the pressure but "because (Boston ace) Johnny Sain was pitching."

There may be some truth to his claim, since Robinson would go on to win the sport’s inaugural Rookie of the Year Award after hitting .297 with 12 home runs, 48 RBIs, 125 runs scored, and a league-leading 29 stolen bases. “He quickly earned his teammates' respect as a player,” says former Dodger Ralph Branca. “He had great natural ability and was the finest competitor I’ve ever played with or against.”

He Was The First Black Vice President Of A Major American Corporation

Robinson went directly from the diamond to the boardroom in 1957, when he was named the vice president for personnel at Chock full o’Nuts, a popular chain of lunch counters headquartered in New York City. “It was a great place to put Jack because he could work on behalf of people, and at that time Chock full o’Nuts, almost all of the employees were black except for at the managerial level,” says Robinson’s widow, Rachel Robinson. “Jack took that office and that position very, very seriously. Personnel issues were of deep importance to Jack, in terms of how people got hired, how they trained, how they got compensated, how they got promoted. All of those issues were extremely important to him.”

Robinson continued to champion black causes in the following years bychairing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) million-dollar Freedom Fund Drive. He also created a construction company to build affordable housing for low-income families, and he co-founded the Freedom National Bank, a black-owned commercial bank located in the heart of Harlem. Says Rachel Robinson: “I always think of that as probably one of his major post-baseball achievements, because he was the co-founder and chairman of that Freedom Bank. It became, before its demise, the largest black-owned, black-operated commercial bank in New York state. It meant a lot to Jack to bring that kind of economic tool into Harlem.”

Robinson later discussed the importance of giving back to the community in his autobiography I Never Had It Made. “I had been increasingly convinced of the need for blacks to become more integrated into the mainstream of the economy,” he wrote. “I was not thinking merely of job integration. A statement Malcolm X made was more impressive. Referring to some college students who were fighting to be served in Jim Crow restaurants, Malcolm said he wanted not only the cup of coffee, but also the cup and saucer, the counter, the store, and the land on which the restaurant stood.”